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It’s been about 7 months since I last went thrift/vintage shopping. The thrift/vintage scene isn’t too amazing in our neck of the woods so I have to drive 30 minutes to get anywhere decent. I know, I know. What’s 30 minutes when there are so many amazing things to be found?

Tuesday, we needed to get out of the house. With Chris and I working from home, we find ourselves needing to get out of the house to avoid spontaneous combustion.

Penelope had been whining to drive to Phoenix all day (Chris and the kids just left this morning). She gets really grating after whining the same thing for 8 hours. So I took her to the thrift store for a little “shopping spree”. I love that she still thinks the thrift store is cool.

We bought a zillion books a few clothes for Penelope and me, some kick-trash leather creative recreation hi-tops for Felix and this basket. The basket is not much to look at, but I’m in love with the size and the angular shape.

This really was a reminder that I still love going thrift shopping. I would like to make the effort to go more than twice a year.

It’s been some time since I’ve posted any of my thrifty finds. Living on top of a mountain hasn’t really lent itself towards impromptu thrift store excursions. Seriously it’s been months since I’ve been anywhere to shop besides the grocery store!

I found these adorable fisherman sandals (I call them Jesus sandals, anyone else?) for $10 just outside of a great Mexican restaurant on Friday night. A couple of adorable women were closing up shop but stayed open for an extra 20 minutes so I could figure out what size to get for Felix. Of course the size they recommended was spot on.

I want to see Felix toddling around in these so bad! He’s slowly taking steps between Chris and me, but he’s still so far off from walking on his own. It’s certainly a source of frustration, but I’ll take every micro-milestone I can get.

I bought so much fabric and talked so much, I am utterly exhausted from my fabric shopping whirlwind weekend. Things have been really quiet around the blog front, but I’ve got a full week queued up already. And I can’t wait to get my hands on the piles of fabric I just bought, you’ll be seeing more than a few sewing projects around here, too.

Either I’m a utensil hoarder, or utensil holders are made much too small for the utensils required for making yummy food. I think it’s the latter. I dreamed up this idea while my sister-in-law was still in Utah, and she helped me on it. It just took 1/2 inch acrylic an acrylic heater bender thing, glue, a drill and some string.

I found out that a local business sells acrylic for a reasonable price. For a 4’x8′ sheet of 1/2 inch acrylic, it was $140. I bought the whole sheet, intending to use most of it for coffee tables. Turns out 1/2 inch acrylic is a bit too thin for coffee tables. Lesson learned: research before buying. They also sell small scraps for cheap, this piece could easily be made out of one of those scraps. They also have black and white acrylic.

The utensil holder is base-less, there really is no need for a base, since this rarely if ever gets moved (I’ve had this for 3 months and I’ve only moved it for the sake of this picture). The holder is 9 inches tall, 18 inches wide and 3 inches deep. It’s basically a 9″x42″ sheet of plastic that’s been bent, and the seam joined in the middle back. Bending it really easy when you have an acrylic heat bender, but if you don’t have one of those and are in a DIYing spirit you can make one of these.

The problem that I ran into after I begun using it was since it was too wide, the utensils would fall to the bottom and make it nearly impossible to fish out. To remedy this, I drilled a few holes and thread some string from front to back creating little utensil sections. The white strings are hardly noticeable – Chris didn’t notice anyway.

I love having my utensils out of drawers and within arm’s reach of the stove top. And I also like that it’s pretty. I like having clean, pretty things in my home.

I finished the dresser. It’s been nearly a year and a half since I bought it with the intention of revamping it. I knew if I wanted to get it done, I had to do it before the cold set in and I’d only be motivated to cuddle in blankets and drink a cup of hot abuelita (I’m hooked thanks to Celeste).

This dresser was originally going to be stained yellow like my rocking chair, but I kept feeling a nagging feeling that I’d be falling back on a crutch. I tend to fall into color ruts from time to time. In high school it was burgundy and navy. In college it was red and black. When I first got married, it was just black and tan. When we moved to Utah, it was yellow and black. Then it moved to yellow and orange.

Picking this color was a huge risk, because the guy behind the paint counter just mixed a bunch of colors and I went for it. There were no samples to go by (besides the paint stick he stained). I knew the wood on the dresser would take the stain differently because it’s not pine. It’s a veneered redwood or something warm like that. Maybe cherry?

I’m glad I went for the stain as opposed to an opaque paint, because the color and grain of the wood really shows trough to add a lot of dimension to this piece.

Also, I never consulted Chris on this color. I knew I was taking on a big risk by not asking him what he thought. While I was mid-job, he rolled in from work and I got more than a bit nervous for his reaction. Turns out he loves it! Bullet dodged. I do need to be better about communicating my home decor plans with him, though. He, too, bought this house.

Chris lets me use this dresser just for my clothes. He’s really nice about that. Atop the dresser I have a little ikea runner I made (fabric I scored for $1 a yard at a garage sale) to protect the finish from my accessories. My accessories are stored in Spice of Life jars and on an old 1950s lunch tray.

I’m proud of how this dresser turned out. Now I need to get our bed situation figured out. It looks like we’re going to buy a new bed for our room soon. And I want to make my first quilt for our room, too.

So have you ever stained wood a color before? I definitely think I’ll be doing that again with any other wood rehab projects I work on in the future.